


What Your Hands Know

by superheroresin



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Remembers, Bucky Barnes's Metal Arm, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-11 20:23:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 16,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9015073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/superheroresin/pseuds/superheroresin
Summary: Something is wrong.Not just the falling and swimming and running and hiding and starving.Something is wrong with it.The temporary repair job from the bank vault has started to unravel, just like everything else.





	1. 60% Capacity

**Author's Note:**

> This work was inspired by "Unravel" by Irene Flores (Image at the bottom of work)  
> A HUGE thank you to Queenie for her thoughtful, patient beta work, and encouragement to share this work with the world. I could not do any of this without you!

He knows of seventeen people on Earth who could even rationalize the engineering behind it, let alone fix the fucking thing. 

Ten of them are overseas. His body, the part that feels pain and fatigue and a frankly annoying amount of hunger, is injured. Factoring in the mechanical damage sustained, he estimates he is functioning around sixty percent of what his handlers refer to as his ‘optimal operational range.’ There is a high chance of failure in taking a plane or a boat to countries with dozens of borders between them—it’s doable, but still unacceptable. For some reason, the thought of leaving the United States makes him feel queasy, but he doesn’t waste time wondering why—

_ You know why _

—This is another disturbing new issue he has to contend with. His own mind has been interrupting his train of thought with tiny reminders and incomprehensible flashes from what used to be his life. Since the snowstorm of static finally started clearing up in his skull it’s become impossible to keep every new thought and memory that floats to the surface in order. It’s been an awfully long time since he’s heard himself think. He includes it as a negative metric in his overall functionality assessment. It adds no tactical value to survival, and comes off as a little smug.

So no, he does  _ not  _ know why leaving America makes him feel sick. What he does know is that with the majority of the list outside his reach, that leaves only seven within the comparatively traversable United States.

Four of them are Hydra.  _ Nope. _

Two of them are SHIELD (so  _ also  _ Hydra.)  _ Nope again. _

One of them is an Avenger.  _ The biggest nope of them all. _

He makes his way to New York anyway because it feels the most familiar— 

_ Sure pal let’s go with that _

—and he immediately feels lost when he arrives. The reduced functionality is distracting, and he worries that the whole unit might eventually fail. If he was still the Soldier, all he would need was a new set of mission parameters and he would execute them without question. If he was still James Buchanan Barnes, he would know this town, even buried underneath the future he found himself free to roam. Neither of these make sense, with the sharp pain of the arm’s malfunction and the inability to recall the name that doesn’t seem like his own. 

_ He called you Bucky _

The arm twinges again, like it knows what he’s thinking about just as his memory kicks the name out. It’s like the stupid hunk of metal is just as annoyed with him as his own mind is. To make the nagging subside he goes with  _ Bucky; _ a good a name as any. It was a name his handlers never would have used, and he likes that about it. Thinking about them causes unfamiliar anxiety to spike, and the arm curls inward, like it wants Bucky to protect it.

Maybe it will recalibrate on its own?

* * *

The answer to that question is  _ definitively  _ negative.

The housing crisis makes it easy to find shelter in New York and stolen cellphones are the key to almost anything. Bucky interacts with the tiny browser using only one finger, and tracks down the listings for apartments in neighborhoods that used to be warzones. He snaps open the little boxes that hold the keys and enjoys the “recently renovated master bath,” or the “charming dining nook with plenty of natural light.” 

He never enjoys “a crystal clear view of the bridge,” or “an outdoor patio perfect for entertaining.” Opening curtains are how one gets shot by snipers. Outdoor patios are too exposed to even consider. He’ll stick with the “private master bedrooms,” and “marble countertops,” thanks very much.

Eventually, he assesses that the unaffordable apartments are usually the most elegantly staged. Both the Soldier and James Buchanan Barnes would be outraged by the cost and the luxury, but he actually finds comfort in the plush carpets and soft furniture. He doesn’t even mind that it takes extra time to do a full security sweep of all the fake potted trees and meticulously aligned artwork adorning freshly painted walls. 

The regimented order of a staged home is calming after the chaos in his brain from all the remembering he’s been doing lately. The artificiality suits him just as well, all that contemporary home decor not fooling him for a moment that there’s anything other than ancient tube wiring behind the wall or old galvanized plumbing under the floor. No matter how expensive the price tag is, the single-paned windows all seem painted shut. 

The future might try to hide the real New York, but she has a way of winking at him knowingly through the cracks in the modern facade.

He stays for one week in each fake home before moving on. So far, he winds up spending most of his time remembering. Not looking for whatever is left of Hydra or trying to clear his name after the existence of the Winter Soldier is revealed to an angry and distrustful world. Just taking his newly found freedom day to day and  _ remembering. _

It’s hard. Constantly ordering his thoughts against all the memories that shout to be heard does little to satisfy his mind. He starts keeping his sharpest memories—the ones that play out the loudest and refuse to be ignored—in a journal in order to train his mind to be more organized. The malfunction in the arm makes writing difficult. 

Day six in listing number five ends and he eases himself onto the air mattress disguised as a real bed. It’s slightly deflated and shifts dangerously as he climbs aboard so a few moments of extra caution are required. He’s still wearing his clothes, something he stole off a tourist kiosk that quickly replaced his torn and muddy uniform, and tucks his booted feet under himself. He tries to remain still, tries to stop feeling the constant ache on his left side. 

The pain is nothing new. The real problem comes from the hitch in his elbow that causes the thumb to lock up along with the pointer and middle fingers. It started when the man on the bridge— 

_ ‘Steve,’ and you know that  _

—jammed the edge of his shield right in the tiny point of vulnerability above the elbow. He really has to give his mark credit for being able to identify and surgically target the weak spot after such a brief encounter, and wielding the perfect weapon to sneak between the armored discs. He’d never faced an enemy like him before, and had a rare moment of self doubt when it seemed the man was nearly impossible to kill. He had been warned by the briefing packet that described him as an “enhanced” individual, but he looked so completely human that it still took him by surprise.

The Hydra engineers patched the arm before he was deployed— 

_ ‘Wiped,’ and you know that, too _

—again. The patch held strong, up until he had to catch himself from falling into the Potomac river. He didn’t think water affected it in general, but the fresh gap between the protective segments couldn’t have helped. He quickly learns how hard it is to look at one’s own elbow, but eventually manages to twist just right in front of a mirror to find that that one whole plate is missing and another is cracked.

The discomfort from the malfunction is more awkward than painful, like an itch that can’t be reached or the intense urge to relieve oneself. It’s a rigid hitch in the nerves that thread delicately throughout the inner workings of the machinery and he can’t ignore it, or bare it, or sleep through it. He wishes he knew exactly what causes the tick so he could just stop moving his arm in such a way, but so far it seems to trigger completely at random. Temperamental thing. 

Eventually, he curls up tightly in the exact middle of the luxurious bedding that hid the cheap mattress and a tiny sigh escapes him. He thinks the danger of a malfunction has passed for today. The paisley duvet (with matching throw pillows in neutral autumnal shades) carries the faint smell of the plastic vacuum bags that are used to pack up the stager’s furnishings. It’s clean and sterile, not at all like a hospital but more like a freshly opened blister pack. Something actual humans haven’t touched yet, or lived all over. It makes him feel alone in the best sort of way, and he clings to this feeling as he tries to ignore the small, constant click coming from his left elbow.

Just as he starts to drift, his shoulder relaxes in such a way that makes the hardware go haywire and he sits up with a gasp of pain. The metal arm has snapped outward, straining to extend the elbow too far in the wrong direction. Plates that normally don’t even touch are overlapping, others straining too far apart. The larger anchoring plates respond to this unpredicted contact by slamming shut on the outside of the arm while fanning open on the inside. The result feels like his skin is ripping itself apart and he cries out, shocked at the pain this causes as something deep inside clicks and clicks and clicks.

“Shit!” he cries out, and throws himself from the bed. He stumbles to the kitchen where he knocks over a bowl of fake fruit in an attempt to grab a knife. The entire block lifts off the counter because they are just handles, glued into place. He goes for the metal spatula from a bouquet of real kitchenware from a tall metal vase, and jams it into the gap above his elbow. He brings his arm down hard on the counter top as hard as he can. The marble cracks, but the hitch is relieved, and the plates whine as they separate and realign.

“Shit…” Bucky whispers. He tosses the metal instrument away, and he turns his hand over to examine it as the metal innocently gleams in the dim glow of under-cabinet lighting. The little armor plates slide easily over the delicate inner workings, opening and closing like always as he makes a fist, tenses his bicep, extends his arm. He can’t even hear the usual clicks that have plagued him for weeks. He’s suspicious of the sudden cooperation but grateful.

He puts two fingers against the crack in the surface of the stone and groans. He was planning on leaving the next day anyway, but he hates that he’s ruined something that had gone untouched for so long while he was living there.

* * *

This work was inspired by "Unravel" by [Irene Flores](http://www.beanclamchowder.com/)

 


	2. 65% Capacity

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bucky's journal entries are embedded into this work as images. However, if you download the fic as an epub, these images may not appear so I've included the plain text versions of these journal entries in the notes at the end of each chapter in which they appear.

Maybe that desperate hack job had actually fixed the fucking thing.

He dares to venture outside for the first time to do something other than stalk between shelter and food. He starts off hungry, like always, so he walks to a bodega, selects a familiar looking sandwich and buys half a dozen. At the cash register he spots black gloves hanging off the edge of the counter and buys a pair to reward his arm for lasting so long without a malfunction. Besides, it’d be convenient if he didn’t always have to leave it stuffed in the front pocket of his hooded sweatshirt. The bodega clerk barely looks up when Bucky hands him some crumpled bills, and Bucky knows the man will move on with his life without ever realizing the Winter Soldier passed through it. It’s a comforting thought.

The glove slides easily over the metal hand, and he opens and closes his fingers to test it out. It’s uncomfortable, the material of the glove catching between the metal webbing of the fake fingers, but something about fitting the glove gives him confidence. Like he tricked the human thing into thinking it was accepting another human thing, instead of a machine. Sheep’s clothing for his wolf hand.

Instead of going straight back to his latest safe house, he detours through a small playground. It’s the kind of park he’d avoid by a few city blocks if it was during the day, but at 0300 the park is deserted. It’s a small oasis only meant for the neighborhood, nothing more than a sandy pit and some colorful structures. It’s probably included on every single real estate listing, presented as evidence that the area is “great for young families.”

He unwraps one of the sandwiches (a “turkey club” the sticker on the plastic wrap claims,) and takes a full bite, chewing the dry, spongy meal slowly while looking out over the abandoned equipment. There’s a big metal dome in the middle of the plot of sand, made out of interlocking metal bars not unlike a cage. He stares at it hard, knowing that’s not what its purpose is (brainwashed assassin or not, he does have _some_ perspective) but there’s something sluggish in his mind that doesn’t let him move beyond his initial victory from the evening. The arm’s condition, the sandwich, the gloves, the peaceful moment to himself on the bench. Even the sandwich (a “dry stack of sawdust and oily fake cheese” his tastebuds claim,) is too enjoyable for him to consider how children use such a contraption. He puts the meal back into the paper bag with five similar sandwiches and sets it aside, trying to focus. When nothing changes, he stands, walks toward—

> _“Steve! Are you kiddin’ me, pal? You can’t go home lookin’ like you made time with the jungle gym. Ha, ha! Your ma will…”_

—the jungle gym. He backs up a step as the spectre of the blond, bloody-nosed kid wearing a disproportionately large grin wisps away. He always has to reorient himself after these episodes, so he glances around quickly to catalog the streetlights, the tall buildings, the cars lining the sidewalks. A couple is walking briskly by. A man across the street is smoking next to a power pole.

He returns to his bag of sandwiches, but doesn’t resume eating nor does he retreat to his safe house. Instead, he pulls out a pocket journal and folds it open while clicking out his pen on his knee. Making sure not to lose these moments were crucial, no matter where he finds himself, and he immediately sets to writing.

He slowly closes the notebook when he finally admits defeat. He was hoping for more but his mind seems to be finished remembering for now. He looks around at the playground equipment, foolishly hoping to trigger another flashback, so he leaves the notebook full of treasure out on his lap when he retrieves his sawdust sandwich. He is careless when he reaches into the bag, raising the arm at the elbow in an awkward manner, and winds up crushing the sandwich into pulp when the arm malfunctions. He gasps and grabs it with his flesh and bone arm, feeling it wrench against the contacts all the way into his spine. Something deep inside him strains against it and he cries out, tossing his head back to beg the sky for help.

The sandwich oozes out from between his gloved fingers, ruining the recent purchase, and Bucky cries out again, equal parts frustration and pain as he tries to fold it back towards his own body. He changes tactics and pushes it farther out, to the extreme edge of extension it can make away from his shoulder joint and something pops, releasing the kink.

The arm whines and and the scent of ozone wafts into his nose, but at least it goes limp and he pulls it into his side so he can catch his breath. It takes him three minutes to recover. The ruined glove slips off, fabric singing against the metal. The relief of freeing the mechanical hand is short lived when he has to throw the glove away. He grabs his sad sack of sandwiches and flees. He makes it all the way to his fake home when he realizes his journal didn’t make it home with him. He must have tossed it off his lap when he wrestled his arm back into place.

Bucky looks out the window and sees the sun has already snuck above the skyline. Plus, the clicking noise has returned to his elbow. It’s even worse than before because he can feel it now, like someone is constantly tapping there with their fingertip, trying to get his attention.

Fucking _fuck._

Fucking arm wins again. He should know better by now than to think a desperate hack job with a spatula would have fixed a piece of advanced technology that the best minds within Hydra pieced together and improved upon over the course of seventy-five years.

> _“…taking all the stupid with you.”_

He shakes his head, recognizing the voice. Not quite placing the memory. Were there fireworks? A flying car? Definitely dancing. It isn’t enough of a memory to write down in his notebook, even though he realizes it has to be the same person as the man on the bri—

_Steve_

—Yeah, yeah. _Steve._ He sighs and jams his hand back into his hoodie pocket. His journal is too valuable to leave in the park and he should get back to it before some sticky fingered child picks it up or a well meaning pedestrian throws it out like useless trash. He doesn’t know where else he might find a brochure from the Smithsonian with all of Steve’s—

_‘Atta boy_

—information, side by side in grainy yellow photos with _him,_ from before. The photos have no color, but he knows that blue pea coat like a second skin. It’s how he could tell the photos from the museum weren’t just a collection of coincidences. That James Buchanan Barnes wasn’t just a specter wearing his face. He could almost feel the texture of that coat, knew how it actually had some shine to it when the light hit the silk-blended weave just right. Not many people knew that, and the replica on display wasn’t accurate, but silk was the toughest stuff on the field back then, and waterproof. The sense memory of the soft whisking sound it made when he moved, the smooth texture, and even the faint odor it always carried of gun oil and cigarettes was so vivid that he had written that down too.

He wondered if James—

_Bucky_

—would have appreciated Steve dropping his shield and refusing to fight on the helicarrier. Probably would have just about as much as he appreciated him waiting for Clarence Van Allen to show up, shaking down the other kids for their ration stamps on the way to the bread lines. What an asshole that kid was.

It takes him an hour to get back to the little playground, thirty minutes longer than it took earlier because he has to avoid so many more people. The arm is still clicking, a telltale timebomb, and he didn’t want a random passerby to overhear the mechanical failure of his inhuman body part. It was still early enough for most civilians to still be in their jogging clothes, or rushing towards the subway with their coffees and cellphones out, preparing for an early commute. The mornings were growing ever warmer as June snuck up on them, and soon it will be awkward for Bucky to wear the hoodie all the time.

His anxiety spikes when he approaches the bench, but he breathes out when he catches sight of the journal, face down in the sand. It’s undamaged, and parted on the most well-worn page where he’s glued the Smithsonian brochure into place. It’s a relief to see that page, in particular, like it’s reassuring him that this is no one else’s lost collection of personal history and disjointed thoughts. Of course the spine is also bent there, the extra weight of the glossy tri-fold paper naturally causing it to fall open to that memory, but he takes it as a sign and smooths a finger over the familiar crease in the brochure with relief.

He hears a car door slam and looks up, quickly assessing his surroundings and locating the young woman responsible for the interruption. She’s across the street, not quite in line with the park and not paying any attention to him. She’s holding a little white pastry bag in her mouth and has a coffee clutched in each hand, apparently used her hip to slam her door shut before marching away from her car. He quickly shoves his journal deep inside the pocket, like someone was looking at his notes over his shoulder and he needed to hide it quickly before they steal his catalogue of memories.

It was necessary but foolish to come out during the day. He needs to get off the street as soon as possible before someone more observant tells the authorities or the press or the Avengers—

_Or Steve_

—that they saw the Winter Soldier.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bucky's journal entry for Chapter 2:
> 
> Steve again.
> 
> Approx. 8-yo. In a playground. Next to a jungle-gym.
> 
> His nose is bloody but he didn’t hit his face on the bars. Punched by a 13-yo kid named Clarence. Bucky is angry but pretends not to be. Steve went looking for that fight.
> 
> [[Steve always goes looking for a fight?]]
> 
> Clarence Van Allen was a piece of shit!! Likely dead by now at least.


	3. 29% Capacity

He stares at what he just wrote. He has a rule that he can’t erase anything in the journal, because all the thoughts and memories came out of him even if they aren’t real, and that’s terribly important even if he doesn’t quite know why. If he was willing to break the rule, he’d erase that last line. “Fun challenge to try” isn’t something he would have ever considered as Hydra’s Winter Soldier. “Fun challenge to try” isn’t something James Buchanan Barnes would have considered either, when he was wearing his blue pea coat and lining up German soldiers in the reticule of his sniper scope. “Fun challenge to try” is a horrible thing to consider, and that question mark sitting there at the end of that thought made it even worse.

What kind of person is he now that he isn’t the assassin and isn’t the Howlie? Is Bucky the kind of person who thinks it’d be “fun” to stalk some hapless victim, emerge from a shadow and slit their throat, all while wearing Dutch footwear? Like it was just some kind of game? Some joke? It’s so easy to snuff out innocent lives, he doesn’t even have to respect his victims enough to take their murder seriously?

He puts aside the journal, for the first time in a long while hoping he doesn’t trigger a new memory anytime soon. His latest cellphone comes out of his pocket next and he taps through a few news articles.

He is sitting on the floor of a new fake home, with his back up against the living room wall where he has a view out of the large windows.

They look out at an older building across the street, but that’s not why he dares to leave the curtains open. The tiny balcony attached to this apartment is heavy with some kind of vine that has dark purple flowers, all twisted shut for the evening. In the morning they’ll fan open, offering a burst of color one doesn’t normally see in Brooklyn, and he kind of loves them.

The flowers don’t stir anything in his mind, don’t ghost through the shadows in the corners of his eyes that indicates he has some lost familiarity with something. It’s just that they are his silent companions, greeting him but never bothering him, and are just as content to roll up at night and leave him be when the day is through. He even watered them once, after a particularly hot day.

A familiar headline catches his eye as he scrolls through the news links and he gives it a tap, launching a video interview on Youtube. It’s been months since the Hydra scandal but it’s still all over the news as analysts uncover more to the conspiracy. It took a surprisingly long amount of time for a report to come out about the long lost Howling Commando “James ‘Bucky’ Barnes” being the Winter Soldier. He feels sick when he watches the interview on CNN, as two historians argue about the Army’s culpability when they failed to retrieve his body from the Alps. A rat-faced man in a blue suit interrupts them and loops Captain America in on the blame, since he was the leader of the Howling Commandos and surely should have known his “supposed” best friend was actually a traitor. The entire group considers the theory that Barnes had been a traitor from the beginning, working in league with the Red Skull after being flipped at Azzano.

It’s like there was a new James Barnes to keep track of now, like the hero from the museum was just a myth, and the Winter Soldier was just a codename. Now James Barnes was a traitor, never the national hero the history books lead them to believe, and he isn’t quite sure if they are wrong.

He focuses on the blue pea coat and reminds himself that—

 

> _“…won’t need clothes where you’re going, Sergeant Barnes,” the man who smells like sour onions assures him, as two more tug open the jacket. He doesn’t resist. He’s too cold to resist. The jacket is ruined anyways. There’s blood every…_

—he knew for sure it was his very own, and knew for sure he was loyal to Steve. He already wrote down the memory of the train, since it was one of the first things that came back to him. He looked Captain America—

_Back to avoiding ‘Steve’ for now?_

—in the eye the whole way down, and recognized the fall from the helicarrier. He watched his mark slip out from under him and away, shrinking into a swirl of smoke and debris from the massive, failing vehicle.

The pundits wrap up their segment with information about how to report sightings of James Barnes “aka the Winter Soldier,” along with directions to the government micro-site for the Select Committee on Hydra for more information about his “laundry list of crimes.”

Apparently, Steve Rogers could not be reached for comment. Apparently, this surprises no one.

He puts the phone to sleep and stacks it neatly on top of his journal, pulls his knees up under his chin and gazes back out the window. He hates the Select Committee on Hydra web site, even though he checks it every day. They used a large photo someone managed to capture of Steve Rogers looking down and frowning, as if he’s trying to hide a terrible guilt, as if he were somehow responsible for Hydra infiltrating every level of government even while he was trapped in the ice after his sacrifice. The Select Committee on Hydra painted Captain America like he was nearly as much of a traitor as the media painted Barnes. They really were quite the pair—

_Couple_

—Pair. Quite the _pair._

He brings his chin in, pressing his eyes onto the tops of his knees, and hopes that tomorrow he’ll wake up and be able to use the arm again. It’s been lying lifeless at his side for days, and he’s worried whatever organic material in it (the nerves and the blood and some connective tissue) might start to rot if it turns out it finally just died on him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bucky's journal entry for Chapter 3:
> 
> Rebecca this time. She’s only 4-yo. She cries ALL the time.  
> Bucky spends a lot of time worrying that it’s his fault. [[Why?? He’s only 8-yo? Stressed out kid.]]  
> She likes bugs.  
> Dad travels a lot for work and brought her home wooden shoes from Amsterdam. She wears them all the time but can’t quite walk in them so she shuffles instead and they make an unholy racket.  
> Bucky secretly wishes he had a pair also, but is pretty sure he would have gotten into trouble for the noise.  
> Clogs would be impossible to sneak around in. Even the most obliv target would hear me coming from a mile away. Might be a fun challenge to try?


	4. 18% Capacity

He has to leave the country. Immediately. Right now. 

Rogers has been looking for him. It was cute at first, since it took days for Rogers to recover in the hospital and that gave him a tremendous head start. It got a little trickier when it turned out Rogers had some help from his D.C. allies and the arm was becoming a problem, but it was still manageable. 

Now the arm is failing completely, and Rogers just showed up in New York. 

He avoids the big ugly tower on Park Avenue, since he knows that’s where the Avengers stay (and maybe live) when they are in the city. Then he sees Rogers in Brooklyn, right there in the flesh, and he pulls up short so quickly he has no idea how the man misses him. He practically throws himself back around the street corner and almost laughs at the close call, wondering what he was ever thinking of by venturing out during the day. Didn’t he already learn that lesson when he nearly lost his journal?

The weight of it is reassuring in his hoodie pocket. He’s sweating already in the July heat, but a cold shock straightens his spine as the arm suddenly comes alive. It’s almost a relief to feel the white hot pain of it burning at his side, to hear the familiar click ramp back up, but he grimaces and clamps down on it when something new happens. Some servo is caught up in the malfunction and his thumb, index and middle fingers spasm in time with the clicking. He can’t seem to stop it, and it almost looks worse when he tries to hide his hand in his pocket while he makes his way back to his fake home. It’s the most robotic looking tick someone could possibly have, and several people stop to stare at him as he staggers down the street. At least the distraction of his hand dancing around in his pocket is enough to ensure no one looks at his face, but his metal arm is no secret.

And Rogers— 

_ Steve _

—is in fucking Brooklyn.

He slams his fake home’s front door shut and immediately hides in the bathroom, where there are no windows. He can still feel the eyes on him, so he strips off his sweaty clothes as best he can with one arm and hides in the tub instead. He’s sweating, and this time he thinks it’s actually because of the pain, which has made its way down his spine and now it’s causing the muscles in his right leg to tighten. He bites his lower lip, hears himself whimper, feels like he’s going to be sick. He’s hot all over, and the arm continues to spasm at his side, the metal clattering against the cool enamel of the tub.

Just a few more minutes to return to baseline and he could take a look at it with a new set of dental picks he picked up the day before. Surely he could fix it, or at least disable it again to get rid of the tap, tap, tap at his elbow. A few more minutes never seems to be enough though, as many times as he repeats the goal, and the pain continues to wash through him, soaking into his bones. Even the hard metal bone inside the arm is humming with it, and eventually a harsh cry escapes him. He strikes the back of his head against the edge of the tub until he sees stars, hoping to disorient himself away from the licks of flame radiating out of the contact scar between his flesh and the arm. Instead, it only serves to make him dizzy, and he cries out again before figuring out what to do. He doesn’t have time for this, he needs to get out of the city, out of the country, and the desperation reaffirms his resolve. 

He’s naked and trembling as he dumps the dental tools across the cold tile floor, and he pokes through the sharp metal instruments for a few seconds before selecting a tiny mirror and a long, bent pick. He bites the thin metal stem of the mirror tool, using his teeth to orient it just right with his elbow forced painfully up over his head, and uses his right hand to jab the pick into the tiny exposed window.

Aside from the versatile disks that allow for tactile movement, and the large plates that encase the arm in protective barrier of hard armor, there is a finer mesh layer that protects the more delicate inner workings. The mesh has a tear, just above the missing plate, where the cracked disk intersects with a connective hinge. It’s hard to see with the arm constantly moving, the malfunction forcing him to sway a little bit to keep his eye on the little hole via the dental mirror, but he thinks he can see an errant coil, wrapped around the hinge connecting to the cracked disk. It slides along the bar like a tiny tentacle, tightening at every extension the arm is forced to make against his will. 

He takes in a breath, nudges the coil with the hooked dental pick and the mirror falls from his mouth when he screams.

It takes some moments for him to collect himself and his tools to try again. This time he nearly breaks his teeth on the dental mirror, and he sweats buckets as he inches the coil away from the hinge bar. Eventually the coil releases, snapping back into the darkness of the arm’s inner workings, and the tick comes to a sudden stop.

He stretches out across the tile floor, gasping with relief. He has to get up, has to leave New York, but right now all he can think about is how beautiful it feels, the hard tiles at his back and the silence in his arm. He looks down at it, sees the plates drunkenly arranged. He can move the bone inside the arm, can lift it and bend it at the elbow, but what sensation he had of muscles and sinew was gone. The plates fall freely open and closed with gravity as he turns his arm over to examine it, making small clicking noises as they slide across the numb inner mesh.

He did his best to make a fist but it was weak, anesthetized, except for an electronic feeling of pins and needles not unlike the feeling his flesh arm has when the circulation is hampered. Still, without the distraction of the pain or the incessant click of the elbow, his head is finally able to clear.

Rogers is still looking for him. He still has to get out of New York. His arm still needs to be repaired. 

The thought of leaving New York openly terrifies him now. Why? He asks himself this question again and again but his nagging memory is being no help at all so he finally just closes his eyes and wills himself to melt into the cool tiles. The fever he was experiencing is already draining out of his body but— 

> _ “...fever is really dangerous for a fella your size, Steve. Why don’t you listen to your ma? She knows this better ‘n anyone.” _
> 
> _ “Geez Buck, I’m fine. Mom’s sick anyway, she doesn’t need to worry about it. Size doesn’t mean a whole lot when…”  _

—he can still feel the sweat springing up on his forehead. He opens his eyes slowly as he cautiously re-enters the memory, too exhausted to consider that he’d have to get up to fetch his journal as soon as it was over. It doesn’t take much to— 

> _ “...doesn’t mean a whole lot when you’re the one getting into fights, Buck. I saw you slap Mikey Temple in the back of the head when he kicked that dog.” _
> 
> _ “Mikey Temple isn’t a big guy!” _
> 
> _ “He’s huge, Buck! And three years older than us!”  _
> 
> _ “So’s a sack of moldy potatoes, it doesn’t mean it can take me on. Come on then, I’ll make you a deal. We’ll keep each other’s secret from your ma, as long as you make sure that fever doesn’t get any worse. She’s got better things to worry about than our…” _

—urge the memory out of hiding. 

He stares at the ceiling for a few moments when the blanks finish filling in. He focuses on where the old owners didn’t tape off the light fixture properly and some of the original paint shows through the new layer.

He groans when he sits up, a dental pick rolls off his belly and clatters to the floor. The arm is still numb, but at least he can control it again.

It’s worse when he stands, and all of a sudden he realizes how heavy it is. Something about how the different mechanical parts worked together helped stabilize it at his side, and balance it against the pull along his spine. It felt like there was a thin strap tugging at his back, starting right between the shoulderblades. He takes a step and immediately crashes into the side of the tub, after listing drunkenly to one side. 

He can’t escape the country like this, which leaves only the options of surrender or getting it fixed. Hydra is still out there, and if he surrendered they’d likely reclaim him before the government could even make heads or tails of his situation. And the Avengers—

_ You mean Steve _

—would likely be no help at all considering how many of him he tried to kill. That really only leaves the option of finding someone to fix it. He had been keeping an eye on two of the four Hydra scientists he knows could make an attempt. One who operates a biotech company in Philadelphia and the other who is the lead researcher at an engineering firm right here in New York. Somehow they avoided the government purges and continued to operate right out in the open, no one being the wiser that they still attend regular secret meetings and whisper “hail Hydra” in each other's ears when they meet at science conferences. Kidnapping one would be easy, both logistically and morally, and it was starting to look like the only way he could survive.

He supposed he could always try to rip the fucking thing off.

He walks carefully back into the hall where he retrieves his backpack, his journal and his phone, goes back to the bathroom floor to open a fresh blank page and starts writing.

Once he’s finally put the journal away, satisfied he got the details right, he notices the dental pick on the floor, the one he used to free the errant coil, has a smear of blood along the edge. It’s enough blood that a few drops have escaped the tool, and made a nice little red coin on the pale marble tiles. That meant that the blood vessels deep inside the arm ruptured when the coil sprang free of the bar hinge. No wonder he lost feeling.

He wasn’t an expert in the arm—

_ OBVIOUSLY _

—but he knew the biomechanical properties of how it was engineered are what allowed it to have such sensitively and responsiveness. In a way, his blood makes it an imperfect robotic prosthetic. In another way, he supposed, that makes it more  _ his  _ arm than anyone else’s. Either way, it’s a huge problem. 

He raises his hand and tries to make another weak fist. The bones cooperate but the plates slip along the underlayer with the gravity instead of his own signals. He concentrates on the fist, trying to make it coil as tightly as possible, then startles back when a trail of blood spatters on the floor next to him. It shot out of the hole in the elbow after building up in the fist, and the surface tension is now pulling it along the grooves that separates the plates. 

“What a mess,” he whispers out loud. Does this mean he’s going to bleed to death? He has no idea if the artificial capillaries in the arm can heal or not. He resorts to stuffing toilet paper into the hole in his elbow, pushing it in as deep as it will go with the dental tools, and hoping somehow it might help clot the flow. It feels weird to have the torn cotton filling up the negative space inside his arm, and can tell the movement is stiff.

At least it doesn’t hurt anymore. At least the clicking has stopped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bucky's Journal Entry for Chapter 4:
> 
> Steve never backs down, even when he’s sick.   
> He gets in a fight when he’s 14-yo and Bucky barely gets there in time before some kid known as Spanky [[street alias]] kicks his ass.  
> Bucky knows that Spanky is actually only 12-yo [[still an asshole though]] but doesn’t want to tell Steve he got beat up by a kid. Bucky has no problems beating up a little kid [[proof he was Hydra all along, probably]] so he punches Spanky in the mouth and sends him packing.  
> Steve isn’t hurt bad that time but-   
> Steve is wearing trousers that actually fit him for once, with new suspenders. Not so new, one of them is stretched out.  
> That was the reason the argument turned into a fight. Spanly pulled Steve’s new suspenders and ruined one side.   
> Steve wound up with a hole in the knee of the new trousers too, but he doesn’t seem as bothered by that. Maybe because it was his fault. A badge of pride.  
> Steve is usually fighting other people’s bullies. He sticks his big nose in to get it punched. But this time it was personal.  
> His ma gave him those suspenders.  
> His ma is sick. She’s a nurse.   
> She’s a nurse in a TB ward and Steve just found out she was sick.  
> His ma’s name is Sarah. Sarah Rogers.  
> She died too, but years later. At the “end of the line.” The trigger words that broke the programming the first time.  
> The suspenders had a blue stripe down the middle. They were pretty flashy, for Steve.


	5. 4% cApacit’y

Dr. Sanjay Walker tosses his messenger bag on the passenger side seat, clicks his phone into the charger on the dash, and sighs into his steering wheel. It was going to be a killer commute to his Morgan Hill penthouse, but it’s still worth it to drive in every morning. The Tesla starts silently, with little more than a whisper, and he pulls out of his private parking space in Q-Fusion Labs, just outside of the city. He’s preoccupied, thinking about his little life, and doesn’t notice the man in the back seat until he speaks.

“Hail Hydra,” Bucky growls from behind his left ear.

The engineer is so startled he slams on the breaks and cries out in fear, and suddenly there is the very real chance he might get himself killed without Bucky having to do a thing. Cars scream past but there is no collision, and he turns and cries out again when he sees who his passenger is.

“Don’t kill me!”

“You’re going to handle that yourself if you don’t start driving,” Bucky warns, but doesn’t lower his gun.

“Ohgodohgodohgod,” Walker whimpers, urging the car forward again. He merges back into the fray, likely thinking these were his last minutes on earth and he has to spend them in traffic. “Please don’t kill me.”

“I’d like to,” Bucky admits freely. “But I need you alive.”

“Wha—  _ Why? _ What could I possibly? I don’t know you.”

“You're sitting in a puddle of your own cowardice. I’m pretty sure you know me.” 

“I mean I don’t know anything  _ about  _ you. I had nothing to do with Hydra’s science division.”

Bucky laughs, and he’s pretty sure that makes the puddle of the engineer’s cowardice grow deeper. It’s the first time he’s encountered Hydra after D.C., and he’s so relieved by how incredibly pedestrian this man is. He doesn’t know why he was too scared to do this sooner. This man is no Alexander Pierce. 

“You can fix this though,” he says, holding up his metal hand. It flops at the wrist. He lost all the motor control of the hand three days prior. After deciding Walker would be his next mark, Bucky put off any and all maintenance of the arm, hoping it would magically fix itself. Maybe if his mind— 

> _ Taking all the stupid with you _

—had nagged him about it more he would have figured it out sooner but here he is, nearly September and desperate. “Take the next exit, we’re almost there.” 

“Almost where?”

Bucky doesn’t think the Soldier would answer, so he doesn’t. Instead he just lifts the muzzle of the gun to make sure the engineer sees it flash in his rearview mirror. The engineer whimpers a string of “oh dear God” and something in Hindi but manages to follow the rest of his directions to a boarded up liquor store in just about the worst possible part of town. He leads them through the back, letting the heavy metal door swing loose on its broken hinges, and kicks a stool out from under a wide metal table. Most of the cleared out shop is draped in thick heavy plastic, the broken shelves and high ugly walls covered in milky white sheets. It makes it obvious that the sterile workspace is just an illusion, and something old and grimy was waiting for the scientist when he got to work. The table has a metal tray, filled with tools. Next to it is a wheeled laptop stand, with a laptop open to display a blank linux screen.

Sanjay Walker sits down carefully, examining the tools with wide eyes while he wheels the stool under himself and settles stiffly onto its hard plastic surface. Sanjay frowns and touches the hard rubber band of the strap wrench, and receives a one-sided shrug in return.

Bucky wasn’t sure what he’d need so he had got a little bit of everything.

“Um, do you have a digital micrometer?” Walker asks. 

Bucky grunts and kicks the toolbox he left on the floor, under the edge of the table. The engineer pokes through the box, makes a few satisfied noises to himself over some of the tools and shakes his head over others, before moving on. He wakes up the laptop, tabs through some of the relevant programs, and sits back down in the stool. He does a doubletake when their eyes meet, like he had almost forgot the Winter Soldier was in the room with him. 

Walker coughs to cover. “Painkillers?” 

Bucky raises a single eyebrow. “You really  _ don’t _ know much about me.”

Walker colors, and pulls out the dental pick.  “Let’s see it.”

This presents an immediate problem. The damage is on the back of his arm, so the only way he can present it to the engineer in a relaxed pose was to put his back to the man. He stares at him for a moment, long enough for a confused frown to struggled across his features, before he rests one hip against the edge of the table and turns slightly away.

The engineer gulps so hard that Bucky could hear the click of bones in his throat when he finally leans in for a look. Bucky doesn’t feel his hands, but he can tell the arm is being handled. He hears the plates being fiddled with, flipped open and closed all the way down the back of the arm and around the front of the bicep. Walker hums to himself a few times, prodding and pinching and poking just a little bit with the pick before dropping it and selecting a long pair of tweezers. 

“What is this particulate matter?” he asks, tugging a few torn scraps of deeply stained material from inside the hole.

“Toilet paper,” Bucky answers. “Couldn’t stop the bleeding.”

“It  _ bleeds?” _ Walker exclaims, dropping his hands. Well, shit. That’s probably a sign that he isn’t so qualified to work on the arm after all. “That means that they found a way to synthesize hemogenesis within an entirely artificial environment. That’s incredible!”

“Very impressive,” Bucky answers blandly, then hisses when the last of the crinkled, bloody paper comes free. Walker nods, satisfied he got all of it, then turns to the computer, releasing the arm. It drops like a rock, clattering into the metal desktop and he gives the engineer a scowl that suggests something both terrible and creative would happen to him if he did that again. 

“Sorry,” Walker says, and looks back through the script he prepared. “So, did you come to New York just to find me?” 

“No.”

“Then you’ve been here the entire time? What have you been—” Walker turns back around and realizes he’s getting the same scowl, so he cuts himself off. “I don’t know if you still have feelings, or whatever, but I’m pretty fucking scared right now. Sorry if it causes me to chatter.”

“I do.”

“What?” Walker asks, sounding a bit annoyed. “You do, what?”

“Have feelings.”

“That’s awful,” Walker grumbles. “That’s what will get you into trouble.”

“Hydra got me into trouble.”

“Well, you are our greatest failure, if that makes you feel any better. Your betrayal essentially brought down our greatest work. Project Insight could have saved the world.”

He is simultaneously aware that James would have been pissed and the Winter Soldier outraged to hear that, but he himself is simply confused. He betrayed the Army when he was captured at Azzano. He betrayed Captain America— 

_ Steve _

—when he fell off the train. He betrayed Hydra when he saved Captain America. That’s an awful lot of betrayal for one person. He wants to punch this stupid Hydra engineer in the dick for the sudden discomfort that the confusion brought along with it. Instead he glances away, ignores the comment. 

Walker pushes on his opposite shoulder a few times before Bucky gets the hint and turns further around, exposing his whole left flank to the man. 

“Are you going to kill me after this?” Walker asks. 

“No point,” he answers. There really isn’t. Hydra isn’t his problem anymore. “I don’t want to kill anyone. I never did.” 

The tools in his arm still for a moment before Walker resumes digging around. “I can see a servo here that is clearly disconnected from the rest of the unit. There’s a missing coil or something, but I can’t find it. I might need to open more of it up to access—” 

“No,” he says quickly. Opening up the arm is when he’s most vulnerable, the nerve clusters deep inside giving access to his entire nervous system. He recalls vividly one time his handler made his face go numb by accidentally jabbing a graphite pencil in the dark bundle of biosynthetic wires that run down the inside of the steel bone. “Just do what you can. It doesn’t need to be one hundred percent.”

“Well, at the moment it’s running and about five,” Walker says primly. 

“Four,” he corrects, and Walker doesn’t argue. Instead he resumes pushing his tweezers deeper inside the arm. He makes a frustrated sound, gives up and selects a pair of hemostat clamps.

“I don’t think I can reach the coil that needs to re-attach—” Walker leaps back at the sound of a startled scream, but turns and immediately runs for the door.

The pain was so shocking, so immediate and extreme, that he even drops his gun. He doesn’t think that has ever happened before, and he is so panicked by the great crashing wave of it that he doesn’t even care that the engineer has bolted for the back door. He reaches behind his arm and grabs the hemostat clamps but is immediately taken to his knees. He cries out again, falling into one of the table legs forcing it several feet across the floor. The laptop stand topples over with a crash as he struggles to stop writhing long enough to get ahold of the tool sticking out of the back of the arm. His flesh hand is trembling and weak, and when he finally gets ahold of the forcep handles he barely has the strength to push them together to release the ratchet. He bites down so hard on his lower lip he can taste blood and he clenches his eyes against the inevitable sting of tears. The clamp doesn’t release and he cries out helplessly, kicking hard at nothing in particular and taking himself to the floor. 

“Fuck!” He screams, realizing the pain had reached his entire body, a cord of fire zipping along at the speed of thought, infecting him everywhere. He could barely breathe through the haze of it in his chest, could barely think past the pounding of it through his temples. He needs it off. He needs the arm off,  _ immediately! _

Saving it isn’t worth it, and never was. What was he thinking even trying? He cries out again, trying to get the strength just to think about how to get it off, before he remembers all the tools he collected. It’s nearly impossible to focus, but he kicks open the toolbox, tosses aside a jigsaw, a box cutter, and a soldering iron before pulled out the tool that could do the job. The whole time he’s pretty sure he’s losing the fight against whatever was eating him from the inside out, a clutch of rats or maybe tumbleweeds of broken glass and barbed wire.  

He falls to his back, clutching a dremel with a diamond tip bit. He collected this tool in particular because it could trim the main structure plates if he had to. He presses the button, cries in relief when the round little blade blurs into a spin. Was he really going to cut off— 

> _ “...can’t save it, unfortunately. How-ev-er, I always say every problem is also an opportunity.  I have been testing a new exo-suit that can be modified to replace it. It’ll be stronger than flesh. You will be stronger than flesh. The fist of Hydra…” _

—his own arm? But it isn't really his own arm, is it. It’s Zola’s arm. It’s Russia’s arm. Hydra’s arm. His mind wasn’t trying to taunt him, it was just trying to help him through this. Bucky lost his arm so long ago it had already rotted away to dust.

He bites his lip again and touches the screaming blade to the metal. Sparks shoot away from him as soon as the blade touches down, and and he works it between the armor plates a few inches above the elbow. The blade whines as it cuts away at the mesh that protects the inner workings, and as soon as it hits the tiny bar hinges, makes a piercing squeal. The tool jams, and the bit snaps clean off. All he can do for a few heartbeats is stare at his failed attempt. The clamp is still deep inside his arm, crushing some precious nerve that is sending lightning down his back. 

He couldn’t tear it free. He couldn’t unlock it himself. 

He throws the ruined power tool aside and his mouth quivers as a helpless sort of loneliness sets in. He can’t do this. He can’t do this  _ alone.  _ He needs help. Maybe a civilian could help? Some kind looking person on the street or a police officer. Once the clamp was removed at least it would be just as lame as before, and he’d be able to think again without the trumpets of pain shouting in his ears. But the whole world is hunting the Winter Soldier, and the Winter Soldier has a metal arm. 

He tries to stand, still gasping for air, and finally manages to drag himself up by practically climbing up the side of the table. He leans against it and tries to examine the arm again, gets distracted by the sight of so much blood. How could it have gotten everywhere in the few moments he’d taken to recover from… Oh. 

He has a scalpel sticking out of his side. 

Dr. Sanjay Walker had stabbed him in the kidney. “Oh, shit,” he whispers and drops back down to his knees.


	6. 1111111 ccpacitttty %%&^%

Three days later, he loops a wire into the handles of the hemostats and tears them out of his arm. He wakes up hours later to the sound of screaming when a real estate agent discovers him on the bathroom floor and barely makes it out of the building with his backpack before the cops show up. He staggers around the city, more lost than he has ever been, unable to understand where New York ended and the future began. He knows he’s disoriented, knows his entire body is starting to fail with the jumble of razorblades and rotting teeth eating away on his left side. 

He stumbles all the way to a bus stop and collapses into the seat. It’s September, most of the heat having rolled away by now, and it doesn’t look so strange for him to hide in the dirty red hoodie while he tries to catch his breath. He was always trying to catch his breath these past few days, and still always hungry. Something about being stabbed in his kidney made him constantly thirsty as well but he didn’t have any food or water with him so he clutched his journal to his chest and tried to— 

> _ “...with nearly all of New York effected by the incident, Mr. Stark has made lofty claims of massive re-investment in the city. The eccentric billionaire also known as Iron Man petitioned the city to pass a number of bills integrating Stark’s housing and…” _

—think of a way of getting to Philadelphia. Bucky stops to consider the odd flashback that his memory just supplied him with. The most recent one yet, and not even from before D.C.. Because of Captain America’s involvement, part of the coverage of the Hydra scandal was re-examining all of the Avengers and the path of destruction they followed around the world. Stark seems to always be the one opening his wallet to fix things, but as far as he could tell wasn’t the actual cause of it. The media apparently liked him a lot more than they liked Captain—

_ Steve _

—America. It was likely triggered because a bus pulling away from the curb is adorned with a billboard depicting Iron Man, high-fiving a man wearing a prosthetic arm. Apparently, there is a new prosthetic based off Stark’s proprietary tech that he is offering to the victims of the New York incident. The armored helmet has a slightly more cheerful expression than the one he’s seen in the press. Less like the mask of a French political prisoner and more like a smiling cartoon. Apparently the deep scowl Tony Stark built into his helmet would have looked too aggressive, and perhaps the gesture of camaraderie would have looked more like the amputee was being assaulted by the Avenger.

He figures the whole thing was just photoshopped, anyway.

He nearly falls over, craning to see the big, backlit “A” that adorns the top of Stark’s massive tower, rising high over the rest of the buildings around him. Dr. Sanjay Walker turned out to be just as devious as any Hydra agent would be. He deserved to get stabbed in the kidney. If he wanted to try that again, he could make his way to Philadelphia, or he could give it one last shot, and try an engineer closer to home.

It takes two days to break into Stark’s precious new building. He figures it would be another couple of days searching before he found the man himself but as soon as he slips out of the fire stairwell door, he’s staring him right in the face. Tony Stark has incredibly big brown eyes.

“Hello,” Stark says, looking surprised but not concerned, which would be more confusing if it wasn’t taking everything within Bucky’s power to stay standing. “Please tell me it took you more than twenty four hours to crack my security. Jarvis? Did it take him more than twenty four hours to crack my security?”

“It took him forty-eight hours to spoof my emergency protocols well enough to gain access to the fire exits,” the AI responds, and he swallows, unable to see anything of past New York in this gleaming tower of technology. “I apologize for the failure, sir. It will not happen again.”

“S’all right, buddy. We all make mistakes.” Tony turns back to him, and raises an eyebrow. “Barnes, right?” 

Something is wrong. Stark should be more… worried. 

“Bucky,” he says, apparently. He pauses to see if his memory pats him on the back. It’s been staying unusually silent the last few days. He can tell there’s something there, scrambling through his half-ordered thoughts, but he’s too pleased about getting his own name right to listen to it. “My name is Bucky,” he says, reaffirming the statement even though Stark didn’t seem to question it the first time— 

_ You killed his father! Howard _

—Oh. Shit. 

Stark folds his arms across his chest. “That nickname doesn’t really work for me,” he says flippantly. “But I guess I’d be the bad guy if I tried to take it from you, so come on.”

Bucky falls into step behind him— 

_ You killed his mother! Maria _

—Bucky swallows, but doesn’t know what to do with the information his mind is suddenly shouting at the top of it’s voice. “Where are we going?”

“Lab’s this way, unless you want me to take a look at it in the hallway. Figured we could get you a stool. Maybe a latte. You look like you could use a latte. Jarvis?”

“On it, sir. One latte, and one triple plenti soy no foam latte, with caramel drizzle. Decaf,” the computer adds this last part in a slightly smug tone and Bucky wonders if Tony parsed his own mind into a way it could talk back to him with an actual voice.

“You’re a peach.”

It takes a second to catch up with Stark’s previous yammering after being shouted at by his own mind. “You knew I was coming?”

“When they found out Doc Walker was Hydra, he tried to get immunity by giving up the Winter Soldier. He says he wounded you?”

“He tried.” 

“Right, well, it didn’t take long for us to figure out you were hunting scientists for your prosthetic. Since you were in New York and I’m the best robotics engineer on the planet,” Stark literally pats himself on the back, his own arm’s mobility perfect an unencumbered by injury. Show off. “We figured you’d come here eventually. I try not to be hurt you didn’t come to me first.” 

“I would have threatened you, if I came to you first.” 

“So the gun in your jacket is just for show?”

“...I was planning to threaten you anyway.”

“What changed?”

He remembered killing his parents. Bucky shrugs. “Did you pose for the billboards for your new line of prosthetics?”

“Of course,” Stark says immediately, dropping the device he was holding in offense. “It took me weeks to change that faceplate but Pepper insisted I listen to my marketing people for once and then there was the problem of actually manufacturing all new lenses throughout the old design in order to…” 

Bucky stops listening to get a better look at the marvels in the engineering workshop. Tools and robotics in various stages of their build process were lined up along the far walls. Rows of workbenches braced more substantial digital display tables (along with a conspicuously out of place wet bar.) He sees various pieces of the other Avengers’ gear as well then his gaze stops when he spots the suit in the corner of the room. It looks like Steve’s uniform from before, during the war when he was still selling war bonds even though he was busy taking down Hydra bases all over Europe. The suit is in pieces, like it’s still only a half-formed thought, panels opened up to expose the featureless mannequin beneath. The thick cordura and tactical carbon fiber weave are materials that they hadn’t even dreamed of during the war, but the bright silver star in the middle of the chest winks at him from across the room like an old friend. Stark eventually notices his gaze and trails off before clearing his throat. 

“You know, it’s a challenge to make the ol’ stars and stripes look cool but I think I do a good job. Steve doesn’t want to go back to wearing the Strike Team suit he had at SHIELD. Something about being  _ a symbol,” _ Stark exaggerates the last two words with an eyeroll and finger quotes. “He gets his patriotic colors back and I get to draw a happy face on  _ my  _ symbol, what’s that tell you about marketing.”

It doesn’t tell Bucky anything about marketing. “Speaking of stars and bars, what do you want to do with this?” He taps the red soviet mark on the arm with a pen that seemed to magically appear from behind his ear. “Kind of more  _ Galactic Empire  _ than  _ Rebel Alliance, _ don’t you think?”

“Um,” Bucky wonders if that has something to do with the Chitauri invasion. “Maybe just make it move again.”

“So are we looking at a total loss of motor control?” 

“Yes.”

“Any discomfort?”

Bucky doesn’t even know how to begin to answer that question. “...yes.” 

“Welp, let’s show her a good time before we undress her. Jarvis? Bring up pre-viz.” 

The AI doesn’t even answer, and Bucky jumps when a holographic interface leaps out of the table on Tony’s left, depicting his very own body. He could see the main strut, connecting to his spine between his shoulder blades. The sophisticated graft of the metal to the scapula and the anchors on his breastbone.

“Oh my god,” Stark said, surprising Bucky by the low sound of his whisper. Up until that point, he was sure Stark never learned how to speak any lower than a mildly amused half-shout.

“Is it...okay?” Bucky asks. He didn’t even shoot the Starks. He killed them both with his bare hands— 

_ With the arm _

—“Yeah it’s... no! No, it’s not okay. How are you even still standing? How are you even–” Tony cups his hand over his mouth and Bucky starts to sweat—  

_ And he knows it _

—“I should leave,” he says, slipping off the table.

“What? Why? I can fix it, it shouldn’t be too—”

_ He’s just stalling for time _

—“I shouldn’t have come here in the first place,” Bucky insists, slipping his backpack over his right shoulder. 

“Now hold on just a minute, terminator,” Stark sputters, but Bucky ignores him and backtracks through the lab. Tony shouts from behind him, “Jarvis, doors!” 

Bucky stops at the entryway, looking through the reinforced glass of the blast doors to the hallway and freedom beyond. If the arm was working, the doors wouldn’t have been enough to stop him. Of course, if the arm was working he wouldn’t be here in the first place, trapped. He spins around, trying not to panic. 

“Am I your prisoner?”

“Barnes, if I let you go, he might just kill me, and you know it.” 

“What?”

“Jarvis called Steve— 

_ Steve _

—the moment you walked into the hallway. He can help you. I can help you, if you just— “ 

“Why the fuck would you want to help me?”

“You know, it’s still up for debate but I think Rogers has a problem with swears,” 

“Steve swears like he joined the fucking navy!”

“All evidence to the con—”

“Sir,” the building AI cuts in. “Captain Rogers has just entered the lobby.” 

Bucky wants to scream. He turns to the door and punches it with his flesh hand but it doesn’t budge. He still has almost no power in his shoulders, trailing the metal limb unevenly, and he punches the doors three more times before finally giving up. He’s so exhausted, from pain and hunger and restless nights, he nearly collapses into the immovable doors and his breath puffs out against them in a heavy fog. “Let me go. Don’t make me see— 

_ Steve! _

— him. He doesn’t want me. Doesn’t want to see me. Not like this, Stark. Just let me go.” 

Tony is quiet for so long that Bucky parts with the doors to look back over his shoulder. The engineer turned superhero is standing next to the display, staring down at a tool in his hand and letting his nervous leg shake as he chewed his bottom lip.

“Please?”

Tony sighs, his attention shifting away from the thing in his hand and back towards the display case with the half formed symbol hanging inside. “You know, a good friend of mine has a problem. You might have seen the news about him? Big and green and mean? Anyway, s‘not his fault. He loses control. People get hurt. When it’s over, when he’s himself again, he knows that what he did wasn’t him. That he didn’t have a choice. That the other guy did those things.”

“But he still did them,” Bucky argues. Stark looks back at him sadly and nods. 

“And I get that sometimes that’s bad enough. But one thing that impresses me about my friend? He doesn’t let that stop him. We’re working on a way to control it, even when the whole point of the Hulk is that there’s no control. He’s figuring out a way to own it, and we’re helping him. And I gotta tell ya, if we can turn that giant green rage monster into a hero, the Winter Soldier should be a piece of cake. After all, James Barnes already was one.”

“I killed your parents.” 

Stark’s silence is different this time. Not contemplative, not considering. It was the sound of a complete lack of movement, of breath stolen by shock. His brown eyes had gone so wide, Bucky couldn’t even tell if it was just the surprise or the anger that kept him from blinking. It was certainly anger that kept him from breathing. 

Bucky’s glare was meant for himself, but he turned it on Tony, just to prove a point. “Still want to turn the Winter Soldier into a hero?” 

“I…” Tony swallows, and his fingers twitch around the small device he’s still handling. “My parents died in a car accident.” 

“I shot out the back right tire with a twelve gauge.” Bucky remembers the exact sound the remaining three tires made when the car skidded off the road, the thunderstrike of crunching metal when it wraps around a power pole. 

“That’s enough,” Stark says, his long lashes fluttering as he blinks too rapidly and finally tosses the techie trinket onto the tabletop behind him.

“They both survived the collision. Your father actually made it out of the car.”

“Enough,” Stark says again, this time his hands drop to his sides into tightly held fists.

“I used the arm to—”

“Bucky?” 

_ Steve _

Bucky turns slowly around, sees the man on the bri– Captain Ameri– the kid with the bloody nose—

_ Steve _

—on the other side of the glass. He has both hands pressed against the window. 

_ Steve _

—His face is pale, high spots of color on his cheeks, and he breathing hard, like he ran all the way up here. He’s wearing jeans and this strikes Bucky as incredibly odd for some reason. They stare at each other for a moment, looking at each other right in the eyes, before he looks past Bucky.

“Stark, open the door,” he says, his voice muffled through the reinforced door.

Bucky turns back to Stark, who is still standing exactly where he was before, only he’s scowling darkly at Bucky from across the room. “You used the arm to do what, Barnes?”

Now he’s done it.

Only moments ago he was trying to do anything he could to get Stark to open the doors, to either send him away or attack him, he didn't care which. Enraging Stark was almost easy, his memory supplying everything he needed to start a war with only a few words. 

Now, Steve fucking Rogers is in the hallway, staring at him with those needy, painful eyes, while he’s simultaneously being stared down by Tony fucking Stark and his entire regiment of highly weaponized Iron Man suits.

So he’d have to face either one or the other. Captain America or Iron Man or maybe even both at once. Either of them would be a challenge to evade even if the arm was functioning at one hundred percent. He looks down at the hand, the fingers give a valiant twitch as he tries to make a fist.

“Tony!” Rogers shouts helplessly.

“Jarvis, open the doors,” Tony grinds out. The doors release with a puff of air and Bucky groans. 

“Bucky!” Rogers skids to a stop and his hands go everywhere at once, like Bucky is a kid that just fell off his bike and he wants to inspect for any serious harm, but he doesn’t quite touch him. Bucky warily shifts his weight away from Rogers when he gets too close. It’s impossible to say anything or look directly at him, to hear that familiar yet alien voice, and see that ridiculous smile so out of context with his old, dusty memories. Rogers frowns in confusion when Bucky refuses to engage. “Bucky I—”

“Get him the hell out of here,” Stark growls.

“What? What happened? What did he do?”

Bucky was going to tell him, but Howard was a friend of his too. It would hurt him to know Bucky had killed him, to hear the details of how he crushed his skull with a few, brutal strikes from his metal fist. 

Bucky doesn’t regret telling Stark, however. It seems better this way than to accept a boon from someone he owed such an unrepayable debt to. 

Stark speaks up before he could manage to come up with anything to say. “Just… get the hell out of my shop.”

Rogers is too stubborn for that answer, because Rogers is too stubborn for anything less than a clear and apparent victory. “What about the arm? Isn’t he hurt?” He turns to Bucky, his face a mask of concern. “Aren’t you hurt?”

“Can’t help him Rogers,” Tony insists, finally tossing the tool on his workbench. He swipes his arm in a specific gesture through the holographic display of Bucky’s mutilated body and it vanishes. 

“But—”

“Can’t help him!” Tony repeats, rounding on him. “Now get him the hell out of here. Before I call the cops.” 

Rogers is nonplussed by this, and instead of listening to his teammate, sticks out his chin in that mulish sort of way that means Steve Rogers is about to get into a fight. Bucky knows. He’s seen it before, both directed at others and directed at him. He wrote about it, in almost every journal entry.

What he thought earlier, what he wrote down in his journal wasn’t entirely accurate. Steve didn’t always go looking for a fight. He just wasn’t the sort to go down without one, just like old New York peeking through the glossy veneer of the future. It would be the same result if Bucky tried to flee. Rogers wouldn’t let well enough alone, he’d never relent. He’d need some monumental distraction to tie Rogers up enough so he could escape him and Stark both. “Tony, if you don’t start making sense— ”

“I killed Howard.” 

“What?” Steve is so confused he almost laughs, then startles when Stark kicks a work table so hard it tips half the tools off one end. Steve gets it immediately. “I… it wasn’t you.”

“I killed Maria too. Howard begged me to help her and I strangled her. It only took three fingers.” 

“Bucky stop, stop talking—”

“You’re a real piece of work, Rogers.” Stark doesn’t look angry anymore. He looks sad, depressed, like he’s only really angry with himself. His hands are slotted firmly into his armpits, like he is trying to resist freezing to death. “Thought you and dad were pals. Thought you and  _ I _ were pals.”

“Tony, it wasn’t him. It wasn’t. They controlled—” 

“You know, call me crazy,” Tony interrupts, like he’s trying to sound nonchalant but his voice is high and wavers at the edges. “But it almost sounds like you’re not surprised at all by that. Like you  _ knew.” _

Bucky hadn’t realized that was the case, but the way Steve goes quiet confirms it. His mulish posture drops, just a touch, and his chin locks up, like he can’t stand not answering but refuses to lie about it. 

“Rogers!” Tony challenges, desperately.

“Yes,” he admits. 

“Okay, I’ve had enough.”

Tony lunges forward, his punch telegraphed so early that Bucky is rooted by the shock of his brazenness and almost forgets to sidestep. He realizes his tactical error when there air around them shudders from the arrival of the armor components. The miniature repulsors of each segment throw out a massive amount of energy as they swirl around Tony Stark, latching into place on his body in the blink of an eye. Steve shouts Tony’s name but he clearly isn’t listening anymore and Iron Man comes around for another strike before Bucky can recover. Bucky has to actually use the arm to deflect and- and it fails, like he expected it would, and Iron Man’s robotic fist connects with Bucky’s face so squarely he hears the crack in his jaw. 

That’s when the whole world seems to erupt into chaos. Steve is right there, in the middle of the fray without his shield or even a jacket. He somehow manages to find himself fighting other people’s bullies, but in this case Bucky isn’t sure if he’s the bully or not. Wasn’t he the one that picked this fight in the first place? 

Stark is engulfed in rage, blazing with it after the single flat statement of “he killed my mom.” Steve’s cries for understanding are swallowed up by Stark’s forward lunge. Bucky is ignored for a few moments as Steve Rogers collides with Iron Man. Even without his shield, Steve holds his own against the enhanced metal suit, twisting out of Iron Man’s grip before a shock of energy blasts him away. 

Bucky’s heart leaps into his throat as Steve is thrown clear across the workshop, colliding with the wall and crashing to the floor in a boneless heap. Iron Man turns back to Bucky and he nearly shouts at the sight of the horrific smile the faceplate sports before reaching behind him and slamming a steel workbench down in front of him, just as Iron Man’s repulsor fires in his direction. The workbench shudders and forces Bucky back a few feet on the impact with the blast, and he breaks out from under it to dive for cover cover behind the wet bar. Glass and wood explode away from it as Iron Man sends out another volley, this time of physical ordinance instead of directed energy and Bucky covers his head with his functioning arm as the debris flies around him.

“Tony, stop!” Steve’s voice booms. 

“Out of the way, Cap!” Comes the mechanized demand from behind Stark’s macabre smile.

Steve was still fighting, still trying to sacrifice himself for— 

_ Bucky, no! _

—a man who should have died a long,  _ long  _ time ago after a long,  _ long  _ fall from a life he no longer deserved. Steve would never back down. He’d fight for Bucky’s worthless life until he sacrificed his own. 

Well, that isn’t going to happen. 

Bucky pulls himself out from behind the ruined bar, shedding crumbled chunks of marble from the bar’s countertop and splinters of wood from the mahogany panels from his shoulders. He inches back into the scene slowly, his one functioning hand raised in defeat. Stark’s terrifying faceplate was raised as he addressed Steve, and now he glances up and over Steve’s shoulder as Bucky emerged. Steve followed his gaze, whipping around to see him. 

“Bucky, what are you—” 

“Enough, Steve!” Bucky croaks out. “You don’t have to fight anymore. Stark is right. Everything they made me do… I still  _ did  _ it. Howard... he was my friend too,” he says this looking straight at Stark, only Stark doesn’t react the way he expected. His hand is raised, the deadly weapon in the palm of his hand lit up with a charge reserved just for Steve or Bucky or them both and yet he pauses at Bucky’s words, lowers the hand, and a muscle in his jaw clenched. He is actually  _ listening.  _ Bucky continues before he considers what that means.“It didn’t stop me. Nothing  _ stops  _ me. I deserve this,” he looks down at the limp metal appendage hanging from his side, feels the familiar twinge of pain lance down his spine from the continued mechanical failure of it all.

“Shut the hell up, Bucky!” Steve shouts. His face is red, and he has a gash under his eye and across the bridge of his nose from his fight with Iron Man, but his eyes are filled with angry tears and that shocked Bucky more than the wounds. “You have no idea how far I went, how long I searched. You have no idea what it means to me that you are here. You can’t throw that away. You can’t take everything that Zola and Hydra did and make it—” Steve is gasping for breath, winking tears out of his eyes as he grits his teeth past the words. “They already took so much. They already  _ won  _ so much! Don’t let them take you too. I can’t––” Steve shakes his head, like he isn’t sure what exactly he “can’t” anymore. “I just... can’t. Please Bucky.”

And then he does something that Bucky isn’t prepared for. He turns around and drops to his knees in front of Iron Man. The armor is vibrating with energy, Stark’s metal fists still balled up at his sides. His face is still a hard line of barely kept rage, but he doesn’t move to attack as Steve bows his head. 

Steve Rogers just gives up. 

“Please, Tony.” Steve’s voice is small, nearly a whisper. “I’m begging you. If our friendship—or whatever you want to call our alliance against the Chitauri meant anything to you. Don’t kill him.”

“Steve…” Stark’s armored chest rises and falls with his deep breath. “We’re friends, Steve. You think after what we went through, after… after all that? We wouldn’t be at least friends? And you’re asking me to walk away from the man who you already knew murdered my mom? Like it was nothing? Like that friendship there means so much more than… than shawarma?”

It’s a ridiculous statement, but Steve laughs, desperately, helplessly. It’s even more unsettling than Iron Man’s happyface. “Not nothing, Tony. I just can’t punch my way out of this one and sometimes I think that’s all I ever knew how to do. I just can’t…” Steve sniffles, gasps again, and shakes his head. “Tony I love him.”

What the fuck— 

> _ “Fuck me harder Buck, yes! Fuck! Harder! Not gonna break, Buck! Just! Yes! Harder!”   _

—Oh, come  _ on. _ Now is not the time.

“I love him and I lost him Tony,” Steve continues, his eyes clearing up but his voice still shaking even as he gains momentum. “And now that he’s alive and he’s here, he’s  _ right here, _ I can’t lose him again. It wasn’t his fault.”

Bucky can see the lines of Steve’s back pressing against the soft fabric of his filthy, torn T-shirt, can remember raking his fingers across the broad expanse of it just as well as gently gripping it when it was small and slight in his hands. He used to moan out Steve’s name like a prayer, used to bite it off like a curse while they occupied the same space in time, in each other’s bodies.

“Steve…” Bucky says, trying not to get overwhelmed with the memory of being so close to another human being without it involving pain. Something must be wrong with his mind, some faulty servo or misaligned spring that lets such a warm memory fill him up, like heat being pumped directly into his chest. It can’t be real, he can’t trust it, not now when he was so close to escaping both Stark and Steve and continuing to exist without the confusion of their attention. “Steve, I don’t... remember…”

“Bullshit,” Steve hisses, rounding on him. “It’s bullshit that you don’t remember what we meant to each other.” Steve shakes his head and turns to Tony. “And it’s bullshit that you don’t understand what it means to have your own abilities turned into a weapon in the hands of your enemies. It wasn’t his fault, Tony.  _ Hydra  _ is the enemy.  _ Hydra  _ has always been  _ the  _ enemy! And they are still out there!”

“Ugh.” Tony rolls his eyes and blows out a tremendous breath. The Iron Man armor splits open, a hiss of air sounding as the atmosphere inside dissipates into the ruined shop, and Tony Stark steps free of his metal suit. “Fine. In the name of love and friendship and...”

“Shawarma?” Steve weakly suggests.

“Goddamn right, shawarma. Let’s put a pin in this who-killed-who for now. I agree that I could use some…” Tony pauses when a fluorescent light above him spits some angry sparks and finally relinquishes its hold on the ceiling, collapsing with a crash behind him. “...cooling off time. Just get him out of here.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bucky's Journal Entry for Chapter 6: 
> 
> 1) Steve went looking for that fight.  
> 2) Steve never backs down.  
> 3) Steve usually fights other people’s bullies.  
> 4) His ma gave him those suspenders.


	7. Recharging...

“Where have you been? Why didn’t you stay in D.C.? Why did you—”

“Am I your prisoner?” Bucky asks, pulling up short. He had been following Steve all the way from Stark’s workshop in silence, dragged by the wrist as Steve marched to the lifts and down three floors to what clearly looked like a residential space in the building. There’s furniture in the hallway. A side table that looks like it serves no purpose other than to hold a vase of flowers, some artwork on the walls with some classy modern accent lighting, and a length of hardwood floor softened by a long runner carpet with a geometric pattern. The area is staged, just like his fake homes. 

He doesn’t meet Steve’s eyes when the other man finally turns to face him. 

“What? Of course not. I just…” Steve falters and he visibly backtracks. “Please don’t leave. You want to leave, I can tell. Bucky, at least tell me you remember?”—

_ Steve... _

—“You’re Steve,” Bucky quietly says, and his voice cracks on the name. Steve beams at that, a smile wiping out all his previous concern. Bucky thinks again about their bodies colliding, about the heat that builds up between them, and hates it. “I read about you in the museum.” 

The smile slips, but only just a little. “Liar. You know me. You pulled me from the river.”

“You dislocated my arm,” Bucky says. “When I tried to kill you. And your friends.”

“My friends are fine.”

“Tell that to Stark, and his army of metal soldiers.” 

“Let me worry about Tony—hey where are you going?” Steve dashes around him and stands in the way, using his impressive shoulder width to fill the hall. He’s blocking Bucky, like he is some kind of disobedient puppy.

“If I’m not your prisoner then let me go,” Bucky says, pacing back and forth to try and sneak past his opponent.

“Please Buck,” Steve begs him, but Bucky shakes his head.

“Out of my way, punk.”

“Ha! I knew you know me.”

Bucky frowns at himself, finally catching the slip. His memory was getting sneakier. Two could play at that game. “You can’t save me,” Bucky says, finally looking Steve in the eye. The other man’s simple joy at being called a punk shatters and his mouth drops. 

“I… I don’t…”

“You wanted to save me at Azzano. You tried to save me on the train. You wish you could have saved me, after.” Bucky sighs and glances around him. There’s no hint of old New York anywhere in this building. The oldest things there were him and Steve. It makes it hard to look away but he tries anyway, reminding himself of that. “You can’t though. You just can’t.” 

“I fucking can,” Steve growls. “And I fucking will, Bucky Barnes. If you don’t want to stay here then fine but I’m not leaving your side. Not again. You can’t outrun me this time, not carrying that around. Don’t think I didn’t notice how you compensate for the dead weight.” 

Bucky’s mouth works as he tries to think of a come back to all of Steve’s declarations at once. “What do you want? What do you  _ expect? _ That thing you said to Stark...”

That seems to do the trick. Steve’s entire body language changes, his shoulders dropping along with his chin, and he runs the flat of his hand over the soft hair on the back of his neck. “I know you aren’t ready for that,” he admits. “Hell, we weren’t ready for that back before the war, when it first happened. Things back then were so much more compli—”

“I remember,” Bucky interrupts him, closing his eyes to the vision of Steve’s slight frame held gently above him, his too large hands gripping Bucky’s wrists, head thrown back in ecstasy. His memory was a bastard for showing him that.

Steve is quiet, unsure how to continue after Bucky’s tone made it clear he was finished with the conversation. “Well,” he softly continues. “I just don’t want you to be alone, is all. I want you to be safe, and warm, and fed, and cared for, like you did for me all those years ago. I want to fix your arm.” 

Bucky’s right arm comes up and holds the left protectively before he can stop himself. It was an impulse, a need to protect the thing, even though he was so tired of carrying it. The familiarity of the weight, of the twinge of pain and the tick of the malfunction was the only thing keeping him grounded in New York all these months. In the future. Steve made it sound like he wanted to fix his  _ real  _ arm, like he could give it back to him, undo the damage of all those decades with the Soviets. Send him back to that moment on the train when both their lives changed forever.

“Stark won’t do it now that he knows,” Bucky quietly argues, because he doesn’t want to respond to the first part of Steve’s plans. “The Hydra scientists are too dangerous to work with...”

“Dr. Walker claimed he hurt you?”

“Not badly,” Bucky says, shrugging it off to avoid that conversation. 

Steve shifts his weight from foot to foot, and the awkwardness of their exchange settles in. “Can you just come inside? Maybe have a glass of water.”

Bucky frowns and glances around the hallway again, curious about Steve’s request. 

“I mean, inside my apartment. Stark said I had the whole floor to myself but it felt weird so I just picked up this small— I mean, it’s way bigger than anything we ever had but—”

“Let’s go inside,” Bucky says, and Steve sags in relief at the interruption.

The inside of Steve Rogers’ “small” apartment is fucking massive. The real estate agents would shit themselves trying to think of ways to poetically describe the modern marvels in the Avenger’s Tower. The smart home interface, the motion sensor everything, the fucking  _ view. _

All of Manhattan was at their feet, sprawling away from floor-to-ceiling crystal clear windows, even in the bathroom. The rest of the city doesn’t actually look so shiny and new from this vantage point. Bucky spots the Brooklyn bridge and hears himself make a displeased little sound.

“Not very private,” Bucky murmurs, but even he has to admit this is impressive.

“Aw, come on Buck,” Steve says softly, from over his shoulder. “Did you ever think we’d live in a place like this?”

“I don’t live in a place like this. You do,” Bucky flatly replies and Steve visibly bites down on his retort. Bucky wishes he hadn’t. He could have used a little bit of Rogers sass right about then. Anxiety and a strange sense of displacement was already creeping up the back of his leg and he felt restless without something to remind him of why he failed to flee his old “friend” in the first place. 

“Can I take a look at where Walker got you?”

Zola’s serum may have been an Erskine knockoff but it wasn’t completely useless. The scalpel wound was deep and bled like a motherfucker at first but once he had a chance to rest it healed up nice. How much of a deficient super soldier did Steve take him fo— Bucky’s brain comes to a halt when he sees Steve’s earnest look. He just shrugs and glances away, lifts up his shirt to expose his wounded side.

“Oh, Buck… What would my ma say,” Steve chuckles, and steps past him to the open kitchen. 

“Sarah would first ask if you started it, before she congratulated me on being better off than the other kid.”

Steve freezes, the first aid kit in his hand brought only halfway out of the cabinet above the fridge. “Well. I guess so.” Apparently, he wasn’t expecting Bucky to have such an on point answer. His mind really was a much more organized place lately.

Bucky watches Steve carefully as he gathers a bottle of peroxide from the cabinet and a handful of cotton, unsure if this reaction means he said something wrong. He was pretty sure his memory was right about that one.

Steve sits him down on the counter, reaches for the hem of Bucky’s shirt and pauses, clearing his throat and coming up with a few  _ um’s _ and  _ ah’s _ before Bucky rolls his eyes and pulls it off altogether. Then Steve just stands there with his mouth open, staring at the fucking arm.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Bucky says quietly, trying to get Steve to look away from the angry puckering and inflamed edges of the arm’s contact points with his body.

“Pretty sure ma would call bullshit on that one,” Steve murmurs. 

Bucky easily identifies this as a lie, because his mind tells him that Sarah would never use such language, but he keeps that to himself as Steve dabs what was left of the injury with peroxide. He didn’t want to dissuade Steve is testing the boundaries of how much he can joke with Bucky, and it’s a good sign that he’s feeling comfortable enough to make fun. It’s an odd sort of comfort when one can so flippantly insult the one they love.

Oh.

Bucky watches the side of Steve’s face as he works and has to resist the urge to sigh when Steve flattens a non-stick pad to the area. Steve makes a small pleased noise at his good work, and looks up to Bucky with a grin. The wound was healing on its own, the attention was completely unnecessary but it was also just… nice. Where had all that pain of the last few months gone? 

His arm chooses that moment (because of course it did) to come back to life with a twinge, and he winces. It doesn’t react when he tries to move it, but something makes the balance correct inside his body. 

“Is there anything I can do?” Steve asks.

Bucky looks down and sees Steve’s bracing his body between both his hands, his thumbs rubbing small circles against the flat of his belly. Steve follows his gaze and retracts his hands immediately. 

“Sorry,” he says quietly. “Can I at least look at it?”

Bucky obliges, shifting slightly on the counter and angling the elbow out towards him. Steve circles slightly to Bucky’s flank, and Bucky feels comfortable with the exposure, like it was natural. It wasn’t anything like when he had kidnapped the Hydra scientist to work on it. He can hear rather than feel Steve gently touch the cracked plate on the back of his elbow, prodding the tear in the delicate mesh underlayer carefully.

“I did this, didn’t I…” Steve says quietly. 

“With the shield,” Bucky confirms with a nod. “But it’s the patch that failed when I almost fell into the river. Made it worse.”

“This has got to be killing you,” Steve says. It’s not a question, but Bucky nods anyway.

“Hurts.” 

“Like a son of a bitch?”

“Like a son of a bitch. I told Stark you swear. He didn’t seem to believe me.” 

“Tony likes to tease the old man on the team,” Steve says in a candid moment of warmth for his friend before he suddenly realizes that relationship is different now, that maybe he wasn’t going to be teased anymore for being the grandpa on the team or made fun of for his one stupid slip up weeks ago. “Anyway. May I?”

He holds the forearm gently in his hands, like the deadly weapon is some delicate kitten, and Bucky shrugs to answer his upturned gaze. What does Steve expect to be able to do that he could not? He was brilliant and creative but he was no engin— Bucky gasps when Steve brushes a hand over the armor plates on the underside of the forearm, the dormant under layer of sensory nodes lighting up at the gentle caress. The plates slip easily under the pads of Steve’s fingers, making a tiny clacking noise as they stack up first, then lay back down as he switches direction and moves them the other way. 

“These are just the armor plates right? There’s also discs here for extra range of motion…” He’s basically talking to himself as he examines the arm but Bucky nods anyway, confirming what he says. “And this layer here, that you can see when you turn it over?”

“That’s the—” Bucky stalls, realizing he didn’t know what it was actually called. “That’s basically my skin.”

Steve’s eyebrows shoot up at that. “Oh. Definitely like a son of a bitch then.” 

“Yeah.” 

Steve moves down to his hand, gently circling a thumb across the palm, then trailing it over the length of his long, shining fingers. “They didn’t give you claws. Or weapons inside the arm.” 

“Claws? It’s enough of a weapon already.” 

“Right, my face remembers,” Steve said with a shy little laugh. He first tested if he could tease Bucky with an insult and now he was testing if he could tease Bucky with the worst of what he’d done under Hydra’s influence. Not funny. Still a little comforting though. Bucky smiles, then his mouth makes a little “o” when Steve brushes the plates back along the bend of his arm. 

“Sorry,” Steve huffs, his fingers stilling just before the bicep. 

“No, no,” Bucky says with a shake of his head. “It’s fine it feels… It feels kind of nice. It’s been hurting for so long it just… it’s nice.” 

Steve doesn’t answer at first and for a moment they just watch, each gauging the other’s reaction. It had been just a quarter shy of a century since someone touched him like this, since he last saw Steve at all, and now here they were. Objectively, Bucky knows this was happening fast, much too fast to be a good idea, but something about it also feels right, like coming home or waking up from a nightmare. The New York that remembered Sarah’s gentle teasing, Steve’s broad back under a thin cotton shirt, that dazzling (yet slightly crooked) smile, directed at him. This is the New York he kept looking for under all those perfectly staged apartments and fresh coats of paint.

Steve’s hands are still on the arm, and he continues to look Bucky in the eye as his fingers wrap all the way around the bicep. He pulls on it, ever so gently and the plates shutter closed. Bucky gasps at the sudden return of sensation and something inside the arm kicks. Steve grips tighter when Bucky clenches forward, straining against the tension in his bones. “Steve!” 

“I’m here,” he says in response, coming in even closer, so that his big chest is just inches away from Bucky’s forehead, offering it as an anchor. Bucky accepts, pushing his face into Steve’s body, bracing against the sure weight of him as something in the arm cranks hard against the strut on his spine. “I’m here, I’m here,” Steve repeats, the deep rumble of his voice coming through his chest right and Bucky bites down on a cry. He arch his back against the pain and Steve pulls him in tighter, his arms around him now as the spasm works its way down the arm. The plates are all up and moving at once, a small revving sound like an engine coming to life emitting from deep inside it. “I’ve got you, Buck.”

Bucky feels like his arm is tearing itself free and for just a moment all he feels is the burn of too much stretch, like the muscles had finally given way and the arm had been severed. Then the pain washed out of his body, leaving nothing but a dull ache, and he collapses into Steve’s arms. Steve grips him tightly as he rides through it, one hand clenched firmly on the arm still as it reset itself. The plates are responsive now. The fingers too. Bucky is exhausted and sweating but the pain is already draining away.

Without even realizing what he was doing, by holding the arm in place during its malfunction Steve managed to force the broken servo to reset, and the wire snapped itself back into place. It still wasn’t the same, would still need to eventually get unwrapped, all his delicate nerves exposed to the open air while someone fished around for the ruptured capillaries and damaged hinges. The tear would need to be mended, the missing and cracked plates replaced. There was so much damage, and so much damage caused by Bucky’s own flight from Hydra and the Avengers and the strange new future New York that he now occupied. At least now he could reset the fucking thing himself, and all he needed was a little help from Steve.

And Steve isn’t going  _ anywhere. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading What Your Hands Know!!
> 
> This started off as an experiment, because I was so bewitched by BeanClam's beautiful "Unravel" artwork I wanted to see how I could write about the different components of Bucky's arm. Before I realized it, it had turned into this little narrative, and Queenie was so supportive of sharing it that she helped beta read the work and turn it into a real fic! I am so grateful for the support of the community, of BeanClam who gave me permission to share her beautiful artwork and everyone who enjoys exploring all these themes of rebirth and family and home with our favorite grandpa super soldiers. 
> 
> Happy Holidays!


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